Confessions of the QSA: An Introduction to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

As most in the industry know, a QSA must get certified by the PCI Security Standards Security Council to audit merchants for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance. Created in 2004 by major credit card brands, such as Visa and American Express, the council acts as a form of self-regulation.

So, how did Weaver become an expert on PCI, and what types of solutions does it offer its clients?

On this episode of Weaver: Beyond The Numbers, host Tyler Kern talked with Trip Hillman, Director of Cyber Security Services at Weaver, and Kyle Morris, Manager of IT at Advisory Services at Weaver. The trio dug into insights from Weaver’s Quality Security Assessor and explored how Weaver dove headfirst into PCI.

The PCI DSS applies to organizations that store, process, transmit or could affect the security of cardholder data. Companies that fall under this standard could do a variety of things, such as an annual self-assessment questionnaire, or bring in a third-party, independent QSA to do a full-blown report on compliance audit.

Morris is a QSA and started at Weaver about eight years ago. A few years into his career, they had a client, a service provider, start getting asked by their customers if they knew anything about PCI and the report on compliance. At the time, they hadn’t done anything with it, but decided to figure it out. That morphed into Weaver diving headfirst into PCI.

“We help people with self-assessment questionnaires or SAQs and everything from full-on ROCs for Fortune 50 Cloud Providers to small merchants to SaaS solutions,” Morris said.